Nayanthara is born in a staunch Christian family as Diana Mariam Kurian in Bangalore. Her father worked for Indian Air Force and she has an elder brother (Leno) too. As a part of her father’s profession, she had to study in various parts of India. Finally, their family settled in Kerala once he is retired. She completed her Bachelor's degree in English Literature and aspired to become a chartered accountant. She worked as a part-time model during her college days but never aspired to become an actress.

Nayantara who is now a famous artist down the South, started her career in 2003 with Malayalam film, Manassinakkare opposite Jayaram. The director of the film, Sathyan urged her to do ‘just that one movie’.  The movie was a big hit and that year saw her pairing up with Malayalam Superstars Mohanlal and Mammootty.

2005 was a significant year in the actress’ career. Her first Tamil movie, Ayya released and went on to become a big hit. In the same year, she played the love interest of Rajinikanth’s Chandramukhi which made her closer to both Telugu and Tamil audience. And from there, there is no looking back for her. She almost acted beside every star hero in Telugu and Tamil languages and produced super hits like – Ghajini with Suriya, Lakshmi, Tulasi with Venkatesh, Adhurs with NTR and Simha, Sri Rama Rajyam with Balakrishna.

Nayantara is definitely one kind of the actress who donned ultra glamorous roles like that in Billa and devotional role like Seetha as in Sri Rama Rajyam. She almost bagged all the awards for her role in the movie that year.

Controversies – Second Innings:

Nayantara is always controversial for her personal side. In the initial years of her career, she was linked to Tamil Superstar Simbu but later they broke up. Just before their breakup, few photographs of the couple in uncompromised position surfaced on the internet.

Second controversy dates us to 2008; Tamil media disclosed something between Prabhudeva and Nayantara. After denying it all initially, the couple started to socialize together. In 2010, Prabhudeva announced that he is going to marry her after divorcing his first wife. Nayan even converted to Hinduism at the Arya Samaj Temple in Chennai to fit in to Prabhudeva's family. She also announced that Sri Rama Rajyam will be her last movie. But for some undisclosed reason, the marriage broke and she started her second innings.

Post her re-entry, she became busy in films of all languages. Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum was her first release in the second innings which scored well with the critics but failed at the box office. After acting in a handful of films, she managed her first hit in her new innings with Raja Rani.